Trace (Trace 1) Read online

  Very, very pleasant. A civilized evening at home.

  Then two records dropped at once, one under the phonograph stylus and the other atop the tone arm, and the phonograph began to screech.

  Trace ran over and pressed the stereo’s reject button, but it didn’t work and he remembered he had been planning to have it fixed. By the time he got the top record back into place, the lower record had been scarred beyond recognition.

  As long as he was up, he decided he would freshen his drink. He did and sat back down on the couch, but his cigarette lighter ran dry. He couldn’t find a match anywhere in the apartment so he lit the cigarette from a burner on the gas stove.

  He didn’t mind doing this since he had perfected the technique of approaching the burner from a low level with head turned to the side. This protected hair and eyebrows. The only problem with using the stove was that he couldn’t take it into the bedroom with him. What would he do later when he wanted to smoke in bed? He couldn’t very well get up every time and go to the gas stove to light his cigarette.

  In a kitchen cabinet, he found one of the Yahrzeit candles that his mother kept hiding in the apartment on her visits to Las Vegas. In some forlorn effort to reinstill religious zeal in him, she kept leaving behind religious artifacts, so many of them that he felt sometimes as if he were living in an archaeological dig. The last trip, she had hidden a beaded yarmulke in his dresser drawer. He thought that he had everything he needed to sit Shiva except a corpse. His father had retaliated by hiding a crucifix in the bread drawer.

  Trace lit the little squat religious candle and put it on the coffee table in the living room. Then, cigarette lit, full glass of vodka in hand, feet up on the table, stereo humming along impeccably with the Weavers singing their greatest hits, he sat back to enjoy a civilized evening at home.

  Two minutes later, during “My Darling Clementine,” he snuffed out his cigarette. During “Fili-me-oo-ree-ay,” he put down his empty glass. Another minute and he was sleeping soundly.

  He slept until 2 A.M., when he got up, undressed, and got into bed.

  He woke up two hours later when Chico came into the room. In the brittle illumination from the bathroom light Trace could see she was wearing a powder-blue evening gown. In silhouette, her long shiny black hair framed her face like an Egyptian queen’s headdress.

  Trace hissed, “Climb right in here. The bitch is out tonight.”

  “Oh, you’re awake.”

  “Of course I’m awake. I couldn’t sleep a wink all night, worrying about you. I thought you might be dead, lying drowned somewhere in a water bed that cracked under the strain.”

  “I had business,” the young Oriental woman said. She still stood in the doorway, backlighted.

  “You’ve had business every night this week,” Trace said.

  “It’s that season,” she said blandly.

  “Yeah. Open season.”

  “Go to sleep. I want to take my makeup off.”

  “You don’t wear makeup,” he said.

  “This guy liked makeup, so I wore makeup.” She walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Trace went into the kitchen, lit another cigarette, and brought it into the bedroom. He was smoking a cigarette when she came out of the bathroom, naked, ten minutes later and slid under the covers on the other side of the bed.

  “You know, I’ve about had it with you,” she said.

  “And with everybody else,” Trace said sourly.

  She rolled over on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. With both hands, she grabbed his right forearm and squeezed.

  “Listen to me,” she snapped. “I am a part-time hooker. What do you want from me? You want to marry me? Go ahead. Propose. Trace, what the hell do you want from me?”

  “I want you home when the stereo breaks and I don’t know how to fix it,” he said.

  She sighed, released his arm, and rolled back onto her own side of the bed.

  “Go to sleep,” she said.

  2

  When Trace woke up, he heard Chico in the kitchen cooking breakfast. He waited in the bathroom for a few minutes, trying to decide whether or not to throw up. He didn’t, and when he came into the kitchen, Chico had just set the table and was portioning out the food. Onto Trace’s plate went one sausage link and one pancake. There was a giant mug of black coffee next to his plate.

  On Chico’s plate went seven pancakes and the remainder of the pound of sausage. She also had a twelve-ounce tumbler filled with fresh-squeezed orange juice. And toast. And coffee.

  Trace sat down and said, “I can’t eat all this.”

  “Try to eat something. You have to replace all that you throw up every morning.”

  “I have to go to New Jersey,” he said. He lit a cigarette.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Some asylum is making nuts leave them their money. Something like that. Marks was in town last night.”

  Chico’s mouth was full of food and she nodded and mumbled thickly, “Ummmm-hummmmm.”

  “I’m kind of afraid of going to New Jersey,” he said. “If the ex-wife finds out I’m there, I’m a dead man.”

  Chico said, “Ummmm-hummmm. “Hmmoww fmarhr msh mt mooo Mmmmmmphz?”

  “You Oriental Sicilians are disgusting, Mangini. Please dispose of that package in your mouth before you talk. Didn’t you learn anything in college?”

  Chico swallowed. It took three attempts to empty her mouth.

  “Okay. When are you going to New Jersey?”

  “I don’t know. Tonight, tomorrow. I don’t know,” Trace said.

  “Do you know how long it takes to get to Memphis?” she asked.

  “Memphis, Egypt, or Memphis, Tennessee?”

  “Memphis, Tennessee, you asshole. Who the hell goes to Memphis, Egypt?”

  “I might ask you the same thing about Memphis, Tennessee,” Trace said. “What do you want to know?”

  “How long does it take to get to Memphis?”

  “From New York?”

  “Yeah. Try from New York.”

  “Two hours and twenty-eight minutes by air from Kennedy Airport,” Trace said.

  “I don’t believe you told me that,” Chico said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because people don’t answer questions that way,” she said. “You ask people how long it takes to get to Memphis and they don’t tell you two hours and twenty-eight minutes. They tell you, like, oh, three hours or so, or like that. They don’t say two hours and twenty-eight minutes.” She hesitated. “You made it up, didn’t you? You don’t know how long it takes to get to Memphis.”

  “I know,” Trace said stubbornly. “It takes two hours and twenty-eight minutes. There’s a Delta flight that leaves JFK at nine A.M. and gets into Memphis at ten-twenty-eight A.M. There’s an hour time difference to Memphis. That’s Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis, Egypt, I think there’s a fourteen-day time difference.”

  “I know I’ll regret this,” she said, “but I’ve really got to know how you know it’s two-twenty-eight to Memphis.”

  The cigarette had calmed Trace’s stomach and he thought he might be able to dare a little breakfast. So he sipped his coffee and was pleased when it stayed down.

  When he looked up again, Chico was staring at him. Her eyes, even without makeup, were long-lashed and darkly outlined. There was a healthy glow on the skin just above her high cheekbones and her long hair shone almost blue in the sunlight that flooded the room. She was a tiny woman, small-boned, but she had the trim conditioned body of a dancer, and Trace thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful.

  “There was this woman once,” he said, “and I was really in love with her. This was before you.”

  “You were never in love with me,” Chico said. “We’re roommates ’cause you don’t like to sleep alone. It was me or a night-light.”

  “I don’t like to argue during breakfast,” he said, “so I’ll let that pass. Anyway, this was after my divorce. Before I me
t you, there was this woman and I really loved her.”

  “What was she like?” Chico asked.

  “She was as fat as a hippopotamus and she had thick hairy legs and inky dirt under her fingernails. What do you mean, what was she like? She was beautiful. She was redheaded and beautiful and funny and smart and sexy and kindhearted, and she didn’t know how far it was to Memphis either. We were talking once about going to Memphis on a vacation and I said I’d drive and she said it was too far to drive and I said it wasn’t and she said it had to be because it was a four-hour flight and I said it couldn’t be a four-hour flight because it was less than that to Miami and Memphis wasn’t as far away as Miami.”

  “Sounds logical so far,” Chico said.

  “Right,” Trace said. He decided it was probably still too early for breakfast so he put his coffee cup down. “So she said I was stupid because Memphis was in a different direction than Miami and she called two airlines and those dips told her it was four hours to Memphis and she said, ‘See?’ So I called an airline and it was Delta and they told me two hours and twenty-eight minutes and they gave me the times and I told her and I said, ‘See?’ Well, it turned out that two airlines she called gave her the time with a stop in Atlanta, and I said if she wanted to make the flight really long, I could make it twelve hours by giving her a layover in San Diego and she didn’t think that was funny and she called me an opinionated moron and left me flat. She said I had the wrong attitude.”

  “That’s a sad story,” Chico said.

  “I know. I really loved her.”

  “Did you ever see her again?” Chico asked.

  “No. I’ve got this vision of her flying endlessly, connecting flight after connecting flight, and never getting on a plane that stops in Memphis, Tennessee.”

  “I’ve got to go to Memphis,” Chico said. “I thought maybe I’d fly east with you and then hop a plane to Memphis.”

  “It’s two hours and twenty-eight minutes,” Trace said. “Why do you want to go to Memphis, Tennessee?”

  “My sister’s there visiting relatives. I thought I’d go hang out with her for a while. I’m due a few days off.”

  “Oh,” Trace said. “I didn’t know you had relatives in Memphis, Tennessee.”

  “Will you stop saying Memphis, Tennessee, like there’s a non-Tennessee alternative?” Chico snapped. “We’ve got relatives all over. It’s a Japanese plot to conquer America from within.”

  “Okay,” Trace said. “Why don’t you book us on a plane to New York?”

  Chico nodded and went back to her breakfast. Trace finished another cigarette, sipped his coffee again, stood up, and said, “Thank you for breakfast,” then went inside to throw up.

  When he came out of the bathroom, she was on the telephone with an airline and Trace yelled out, “Don’t forget to leave yourself two hours and twenty-eight minutes to get to Memphis, Tennessee.”

  It was just before midnight and Trace was standing near the entrance to the Araby Casino watching Chico work. Along with all the other women blackjack dealers, she wore a harem costume with billowing gauzy pantaloons and a low-cut sequined top. She was working at a twenty-five-dollar table, and to ease the strain on her back from leaning over the table, she stood on a six-inch-high platform.

  Three men were playing at her table and Trace knew immediately that they were losing, because Chico was chattering away, smiling a lot, and dealing very quickly. The rules for dealers were pretty standard from casino to casino: when the players are losing, deal fast and chatter; when they’re winning, slow down the game and get them drunk.

  A fat little floorman, whose ill-cut tuxedo made him look like a hungover penguin, stood alongside Chico as she dealt. Trace saw him talk to the players at the table and Chico’s face flushed. She stopped talking while the floorman joked with the players, and a moment later, when her relief dealer arrived, she quickly clapped her hands together so that the overhead cameras could see that she had not stolen any chips, and walked briskly away from the table.

  She had not seen Trace, but he followed her down an escalator, then pushed his way through a door that said No Admittance into the casino employees’ lounge, where Chico was standing by a window overlooking the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.

  She turned when she heard the door open, saw him, tried to smile, and said, “Hi, Trace.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “That bastard.”

  “Around here, you’ll have to be more specific,” Trace said. “Which bastard?”

  “That fat freak of a floorman. Ernie.”

  “What’d he do?” Trace asked.

  “I told you about him. He’s been playing grab-ass with me all week, ever since he got this job.”

  “Hell, you’re used to that from these guys.”

  “I can deal with that, Trace. I told him nice, thanks but no thanks, but he just won’t let up. So just now I’m dealing to those three bombthrowers and he comes over and tells them he’s going to auction me off, that I put out for the highest bidder. I don’t need this crap.”

  “What’d you say?” Trace asked.

  She shrugged. “Nothing. My relief came and I got the hell out of there. He wouldn’t be doing that if I’d sleep with him. I think I’m going to go back and tell him to take his job and shove it.”

  Trace said, “This is your last shift. You’re going to go back and keep dealing like nothing happened.”

  “You’re a big help, roomie,” she said in disgust. She turned and stabbed out her cigarette, and when she looked back, Trace had gone.

  Upstairs, Trace took five thousand dollars in cash from the safety-deposit box he kept at the casino cashier’s. He stuffed the money into his pants pocket, then went to the cigarette shop in the hotel lobby, where he bought a pair of teardrop-shaped sunglasses. He put on the glasses, and in the men’s room he wet his hair, combed it straight back, and parted it in the middle. When he arrived at Chico’s table, no one was playing and the young woman stood behind the table, the four decks of cards spread out in front of her, faceup, so that potential players could see they were all there.

  He sat at the seat to her far right, and when she saw him, she said, “What the hell are you made up for? You look like Alfalfa.”

  “Shut up,” he said softly. “You don’t know me. Deal.”

  She shuffled the cards and Trace pulled out his big stack of hundreds and put them in front of him.

  “Chips, mister?” she asked.

  “No,” Trace roared. “Money plays.” He put a hundred-dollar bill on the table in front of him.

  “Money plays, a hundred,” Chico said, just loud enough to be heard by Ernie, the floorman, who walked over and stood by her side as she dealt out the first hand. Trace got a blackjack and she paid him $150 in chips as his winnings.

  “Yahoo,” he said thickly. “Now I got you suckers. Let it all ride.” He glanced at the pudgy floorman. “Got you guys for five thousand already tonight. I’m gonna buy the casino.”

  “How long you been playing?” Ernie asked.

  “All night. I won here and I won at the Trop and Caesar’s and now I’m back and I’m gonna punish you guys good.” He pulled down his teardrop-shaped sun-glasses and winked at Ernie. “Unless something else comes up.”

  Chico dealt Trace a pair of tens, and he split them into two hands, doubling his $250 bet. He drew two more tens, stayed on those cards, and won both hands. Chico counted out five hundred more dollars in chips and put them in front of him.

  “Let’s keep rolling here, tootsie,” Trace said. He pushed his thousand dollars in cash and chips up into the betting circle, and Chico dealt him another blackjack.

  “Yahoo. Sweetie, I’ll give you a dollar if you keep letting me win.”

  “Sorry,” Chico said. “The casino gives me two if I make you lose.”

  “I’ll give you three dollars to go home with me,” Trace said.

  “Did the entire regiment take up a collection to send you to town?�
� she asked.

  “No, it’s all my own. I’m a zillionaire.”

  Ernie was watching and Trace could tell that he was calculating that this hick in sunglasses had just won $2,500 of casino money. A big winner on Ernie’s shift wouldn’t look good for the new floorman.

  Trace reached under his jacket, behind him, and pressed a button, as Ernie leaned over him.

  “Listen,” Ernie said. “The lady here’s available.”

  Trace raised his eyebrows and slicked down his wet hair. He leaned close to Ernie.

  “You mean to do the dirty thing?”

  “She’ll do any dirty thing you want,” Ernie said. “Won’t you?”

  Chico just stared stonily ahead.

  “You can arrange this for me?” Trace said, slurring his words to sound drunk.

  “Casino policy. It’d be my pleasure for a good bettor like you.” Ernie smiled. His teeth were yellow.

  “Would I take care of you?” Trace asked. “Does the casino allow that?”

  “Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Ernie said.

  Trace stood up. He jammed his money and his chips into his pocket and said to Ernie, “Come on down here and talk for a minute.”

  He walked down to a cluster of empty tables and sat down. As Ernie approached, Trace reached under his shirt and removed a small tape recorder that had been taped to his waist.

  Ernie looked at the recorder in surprise as Trace took off the silly-looking sunglasses and put them in his jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” Ernie said.

  “Something for you to listen to, asshole.”

  Trace pressed a button and Ernie winced as he heard his own voice. “The lady here’s available. She’ll do any dirty thing you want…won’t you?”

  Ernie reached for the recorder, but Trace clapped his big hand over the fat man’s pudgy fingers.

  “Does the casino know you’re pimping?” Trace asked.

  “You’re not drunk, are you?”

  “No,” Trace said. “I think you ought to call the shift boss.”